


whatever is left of the libraries

by Rabenherz



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3, Fallout 4
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bedtime Stories, Bittersweet Ending, Blood and Injury, Books, Brotherhood of Steel (Fallout), Charon has a past, Coming of Age, Dogs, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, Healing, Injury Recovery, M/M, May/December Relationship, Past Brainwashing, Poetry, Post-Apocalypse, Rare Pairings, Reading, Reading Aloud, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26140291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rabenherz/pseuds/Rabenherz
Summary: A lonely boy connects with some unlikely people through his love of books.
Relationships: Charon & Lone Wanderer, Charon & Male Lone Wanderer, Charon (Fallout)/Lone Wanderer, Charon (Fallout)/Male Lone Wanderer, Old Longfellow/Lone Wanderer, Old Longfellow/Male Lone Wanderer, Porter Gage & Male Lone Wanderer, Porter Gage/Lone Wanderer, Porter Gage/Male Lone Wanderer
Comments: 14
Kudos: 24





	1. I - James

**Author's Note:**

> Although in my mind all these little pieces are connected, they can very well be read as standalone vignettes, except for chapter 3 and 6.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss

Father is a tired, gangly giant with knees too bony to sit on. Leaf loves him fiercely at five years old, with all the might of a child who does not yet know that the name Father gave him is half the reason Butch bloodied his nose on the first day of school.

For someone so small, the world is full of terrors. The vault seems a universe of its own, with winding tunnels and seemingly endless corridors. There are doors that must hide monsters, for they will not open before a boy of Leaf’s size.

Between the fear of the dark, and the fear of Butch, Leaf struggles to pick up his letters and numbers as quickly as the other children do. There are a lot of tears during these early years.

But there is solace, too.

Father does not sleep much, there is too much work, and too much worry. Sometimes when both of them lie awake, Father builds caves out of crates and old blankets. They crawl inside together and hide away from the world for a while.

Father is no good at telling stories, but he has many books on the shelves in his office. Most of them are scientific, with words that are long, and complicated, and not quite interesting just yet. But snuck between anatomy textbooks and vault manuals are collections of stories, full of faraway places so alien Leaf can hardly imagine them.

In a steady voice, Father reads to Leaf. He takes his little hand and guides his fingers across the worn pages to encourage him to follow along. Soon enough, Leaf does learn to read by himself, but he hides it, for as long as he can, for Father is always so weary, and Leaf is afraid that these evenings might all too soon come to an end.

Years later when Father is dead and gone, Leaf will tell the world how much he hated him by the end, for his leaving and lying both. But in truth, Leaf will always best recall Father’s face tinted green by the eerie glow of a PipBoy, eyes trained firmly on a book spread across his lap, and Leaf will spend the rest of his life missing that one simple comfort.


	2. II - The Lone Wanderer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow mouldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.” – Jules Verne

One really can get used to anything, be it the bitter meat of radroaches, or the chill of cold Washington nights spent huddled in the shadow of makeshift shacks. Leaf is still skinny and little and so afraid, but even though he shakes himself to pieces in the quiet moments between scavenging and exhaustion, he has somehow made it into his second month in Megaton. The locals observe him; bemused, indifferent.

Usually the Capital Wasteland eats boys like Leaf alive, but he is slowly moving up in the world. He is running enough errands for Miss Moira Brown to afford himself a real rifle and the odd cooked meal in the Brass Lantern. The gun is a blessing, but he uses sparingly; bullets are scarce and often expensive.

Besides, shelter is a larger problem. Most nights he spends outside. However, whenever Gob thinks Moriarty won’t notice, he allows Leaf to curl up under the stairs in the Saloon for an hour or two. Leaf, who fears most everything in this brave new world full of monsters and limitless skies, does not fear the ghoul at all.

"Wait till you meet a feral one," Jericho once drunkenly jeers from the other end of the bar.

It will be months yet before Leaf grows the courage to start picking fights with men twice his size. However, a whisper at the back of his mind says that there are many feral things in the Saloon, and Gob is not one of them. But for now, he keeps his mouth shut and his head down.

He finally learns that Father might have gone to speak to the man who runs the Galaxy News Radio station. From where Leaf stands, downtown DC might as well be on another planet but then, until recently, he viewed the world outside the vault that way, too. The arduous process of gathering supplies for the long track across the ruins at least gives him a reason to get up in the mornings. Every cap, and every scrap of medicine feels like a victory, hard won.

The best money by far is in salvage. The area around Megaton has been picked clean by other scavengers, so Leaf must venture further and further into the wastes to find anything of value.

The caravaners trudge their overburdened Brahmin into town with some regularity, and Leaf finds that there is strange thrill in picking through their wares for little treasures that might come in handy. Soon he is the proud owner of his own spoon and cup, as well as a length of frayed rope that is just bound to be of use one day.

Considering how few people are literate in the wastes, there is also a surprisingly healthy trade in dog-eared magazines from pre-war times. Of course, Leaf buys up as many of them as he can afford. Most of them are damaged beyond use but Leaf devours every word, gorging himself on scraps of knowledge with the hunger of a wild dog trying to lick the marrow out of a chewed bone. It is quite something, he’ll think later, that the one thing he learned to love as a child may well have saved his life a hundred times over.

“Look at you,” Miss Moira coos one afternoon, peering at him almost fondly from the door of Craterside Supply. “So industrious! Have you been at it all afternoon?”

Leaf ignores her but not maliciously. Miss Moira usually makes enough conversation for both of them. He is sitting cross legged on the walkway, teaching himself how to properly oil his weapon with a beaten copy of the March 2076 edition of Guns And Bullets spread carefully before him. Most of the pages are missing, but he feels he is getting the idea. His blackened fingers smudge and soak the paper. Needs must, though, and he’s always thought books and magazines were meant to be used as well as possible. By the time he was sixteen, he had left dozens of notes scribbled in the margins of every book in Father’s library.

Megaton buzzes around him as he works, but he pays it no more mind than it does him. People step over and around him, and there is a lonely freedom in the invisibility of a future corpse.

When he is finally done, he feels both exhausted and proud. Next time he does this, it will be easier just like everything else he is teaching himself. The magazine is wrecked, but not beyond use, as it will help light a fire in the chill tonight. It has significantly fulfilled its purpose, as far as he is concerned.

Having shoved his meager belongings into an old backpack, he is just about to make his way to the Saloon when Miss Moira beckons for him to join her. Inside the shop, something smells vaguely like food and Leaf’s stomach clenches painfully, his reminder that he has gone without eating too long yet again.

“Put your bag down, sweetie,” Moira says. “There’s something I’d like to talk to you about, and it might take a little while.” There was a picture of a hummingbird in one of Father’s old nature books. It is difficult to imagine something so small and fragile existing, especially in the wasteland, but the way Moira Brown flits to and fro, collecting plates and papers, makes Leaf wonder if her heart, too, beats a thousand times a minute with excitement.

He sits down awkwardly, rubbing his filthy hands together beneath the table. His shame is forgotten as soon as a bowl, steaming with hot stew, is placed in front of him. It is probably quite good compared to most of the food he has had out here so far, but he wolfs it down so quickly that he barely tastes it.

Moira watches him eat with a bright smile, resting her elbows on the table like a schoolgirl.

“Listen, there’s this book I’ve been working on…”


	3. III - Charon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest (people) of the past centuries.” – Descartes

Leaf stands watch as a squad of faceless Brotherhood soldiers push mangled corpses of men and women through wrecked windows onto the street below.

Death is commonplace in the Wasteland. Leaf has learned to get on with it.

Killing was much harder to get on with, if only at first. Molerats and mirelurks are one thing, and feral ghouls crave death like mercy.

Raiders are a different matter entirely. Leaf has watched his bullets pierce skin so thin that it hit the bone first.

Leaf knows hunger.

He remembers those early nights in Megaton, when he would dig through piles and piles of empty cans in the hope of finding something, anything to fill the abyss of his stomach. His stiff fingers would cut on sharp metal, so numbed as not to feel the pain, and he would lick them clean as lights beckoned from inside the shacks.

By now Leaf has seen the mutilated victims of many a raiding party, spread and hung from DC’s ceilings like birthday garlands. He has learned the hard way not to wait until somebody else gets the idea to shoot first, and if most of them were not too chem addled to aim straight, he doubts he would still be alive. Regardless, Leaf understands. Understands empty cans, numb bloodied fingers, and the bodies he has piled behind him. Regret forms a new abyss in his belly.

Tonight, there will be a bonfire outside Arlington Library.

Dogmeat squirms in his arms, an excited ball of bones and mangy fur that yips at the flurry of feet. Leaf quietly presses his lips to the top of the animal’s small head, eliciting a soft whine.

The work takes half an hour.

Scribe Yearling is all business when she comes to congratulate them. Straight-backed and unsmiling, she crinkles her nose at a remaining smear of blood amid the rubble and ruined books covering much of the corridor. It is the same expression she wore when Leaf and Charon entered the library a handful of hours ago, features twisted into something ugly by undisguised disgust. 

“Well done,” she says, shaking Leaf’s hand only. “Your support of the Brotherhood’s interests will not go unnoticed.”

There is a long moment of silence, and Leaf feels a little like he must have missed a line in his script somewhere. What are you supposed to say when someone thanks you for helping to clear a bunch of starving drug addicts out of a shelled husk of a building? How is he supposed to know if he wants to support the Brotherhood’s interest at all, if he barely understands where they come from and what they are trying to do out here? Leaf liked Sarah and her Lyon’s Pride well enough during their brief encounter outside the GNR headquarters, but the way Yearling keeps looking straight past him to watch Charon’s every movie does not sit well with Leaf at all.

“Right,” says Yearling eventually, letting go. “I suppose you will be on your way?”

“Actually, I was wondering if we could rest here for a few hours.” Leaf has no intentions of spending the night amongst strangers, but a roof over one’s head is not something to be sneered at. Besides, there is the books.

Yearling appears surprised but takes it in stride.

“Of course. Take as long as you wish, you are free to come and go as you please.”

Charon grunts quietly, and if Leaf didn’t know better, he would almost think it a laugh.

Leaf awkwardly mutters his thanks and whistles for Dogmeat to follow him once more into the depths of the Library. Charon, of course, follows without being asked.

“I know,” Leaf whispers to him as soon as he is confident that they will be safely out of earshot. “I find it encouraging, too.”

There is no reply. Leaf might well be imagining it, but he is starting to find it easier to read Charon’s moods, such as they are. Something about the way the ghoul carries himself, about the duration and pitch of his growls, hints at some rather strong opinions about the decisions Leaf makes.

It’s selfish, he supposes, to enjoy Charon’s company. How he had cried when he learned the terms of the contract binding them.

“I don’t want this,” he’d choked out through tears, trying to push the worn scrap of paper into Charon’s hands. “I bought it to set you free! This- it’s too heavy-”

A ghoul’s hands are dry and leathery, rough as though the edges of fraying skin were callouses. Leaf found his wrists securely captured, squeezed like a struggling bird, and it choked the sob in his throat until he fell silent but for a few quiet gasps. Charon looked down at him, a storm boiling somewhere in that space behind his eyes.

“It doesn’t work like that,” he’d said, simply. Then after a moment’s silence: “Better you than somebody like Ahzrukhal.”

And that had been that.

Charon’s presence has been a blessing and a curse since that moment. The responsibility of the contract crushes Leaf’s conscience whenever he thinks about it. He makes it a point to choose his words carefully in the ghoul’s presence so as not to order him around. However, a strong pair of hands and a steady shot do make a world of a difference out in the ruins, and Leaf can think of many occasions where he might have lost life or limb without his constant companion.

Company.

That’s the other thing.

Charon barely speaks when spoken to, answering questions in that clipped, irritable way of his. But Leaf doesn’t mind. He has never been the most socially adept person himself, but considering how isolating the wasteland can be it feels good to be able to occasionally air his mind to somebody other than the dog.

“Where should we go first? The history section? Fiction? The children’s wing?” Leaf is buzzing a little with excitement. The corridors of Arlington Library stretch before them like a web of ruin and possibilities.

“I am happy if you are happy.”

The mechanical delivery stings. Leaf has heard it dozens of times, and each repetition of the pre-programmed line tempts him to find whatever facility Charon comes from and burn the place to the ground.

Maybe one day.

“Alright,” Leaf says, enthusiasm somewhat dampened. “Fiction it is. But I warn you! Just because you liked The Three Musketeers doesn’t mean it’s all going to be adventure novels from now on.”

Charon _‘hrms’_ and follows without comment.

They pass Brotherhood soldiers who are slowly starting to fortify the building by barricading surplus doors and windows, noisily scraping battered furniture across the halls. To Leaf’s surprise, they largely leave Charon, Dogmeat and him to their explorations unattended. This suits him well.

Scavenging, so Leaf has learned, is a dangerous profession, and often a lonely one. Time spent on your belly, trying to eek out something that may or may not be valuable, above a pile of debris that could soon collapse beneath you. Arlington Library seems safe in this regard, but Leaf is starting to realise why Yearling offered to pay him so well for intact books. Most of the books fall apart in Leaf’s hands as soon as he picks them up.

Two hundred odd years of exposure to the elements and radiation will likely do that, he supposes.

Feeling like some displaced version of Jim Hawkins, Leaf spends a frankly irresponsible portion of the afternoon trying to dig up treasures. Being, well, a dog, Dogmeat is all too happy to assist by carelessly pawing through the mulch and detritus, running between Leaf’s legs and trying to incite play with increasingly pitiful whines. Charon, being Charon, stands guard. Even in such a place of relative safety, he persistently remains on high alert, glaring at any soldier who dares to wander by.

So, the hours pass.

There is something to be said for stubbornness and persistence. Leaf can now call himself the proud owner of ten new books: eight novels, a collection of wartime poems, and a volume of philosophical essays.

“I don’t think we’ll be sharing these.” Leaf almost laughs as he repacks the content of his backpack to accommodate his findings. It is a pretty tight fit, but he makes space by tying the little cooking pot to his belt instead. There are two more ratty sweaters, as good as rags and the color of sewage, that also no longer fit. Telling himself that he will be glad for the extra layers come nightfall, Leaf unceremoniously pulls both over his head.

The straps of his enormous backpack, nearly half his size, strain against the weight as he lifts it off the ground.

Charon mutters something under his breath.

“I’m fine. It’s not that heavy,” Leaf assures, though he is all but certain that whatever Charon said was neither a word of concern nor an offer of help.

What little daylight remains filters through heavy concrete clouds, and Leaf feels a pang of guilt thinking of how many hours he has wasted at the library today.

Somewhere out there Father is-

Who knows what Father is doing? Chasing ghosts or lying dead in a ditch somewhere. Living the life Leaf’s birth put on hold for him some twenty years ago.

Maybe another day or two won’t matter, in the end.

It is almost completely dark by the time they have retraced their steps to last night’s camp, and the muscles in Leaf’s back ache as though he were twice as old again.

A small blessing: Dogmeat has killed a Molerat along the way. It roasts over a modest fire. The dog whimpers slightly, halfheartedly beating his tail on the floor, as though unsure of how he could possibly be as good of a boy as Leaf said if his kill was taken away. Leaf tiredly pulls Dogmeat into his arms, murmuring praise as he rubs along the dog’s flanks, knowing that all confusion will be forgotten as soon as Dogmeat gets to crush some bone between his teeth.

Charon is sitting across from Leaf with his shotgun laid over his lap. He stares at the flames. Watching or not, Leaf cannot tell.

Leaf lets go of Dogmeat with a final rub of his ears.

“We’ve got a little while before dinner,” he announces, fumbling to undo the fastenings of his backpack.

Gleaming eerily in the light, Charon’s eyes flicker up almost imperceptibly.

Leaf tries not to smile. Charon’s moods are like spirits in old stories; they seem to disappear if you draw too much attention to them.

Leaf started reading out loud quite early on in their acquaintance, desperate for something - anything - to fill the void between them, even if it was only his own voice, hoarse and crackly from disuse.

At first, he’d been afraid of subjecting poor Charon to yet another kind of torture.

“Tell me to stop if you’d prefer me to be quiet,” Leaf had said a dozen times, wondering if this kind of command worked as well.

Charon never stopped him, and as the weeks passed, he became-

Attentive is not the right word. Charon is always attentive, but now it seems that he will sometimes lean closer to hear better or choose to maintain his gun at a later time. He seems to prefer adventure stories and speculative fiction to mysteries, and knowing this makes Leaf’s heart ache.

“How about we start with **The Illustrated Man**?” Leaf can already hear it: _I am happy if you are happy._ They have read Bradbury before, and it seems a safe enough bet.

He stops at the weight of a heavily gloved hand on his wrist.

“No.”

Instinct tells Leaf to free himself and bolt, but instead he takes a breath, eyes fixed on Charon’s stony face. Charon’s grip is almost painful, though Leaf thinks he does not mean it to be.

“Okay,” Leaf says carefully, letting the worn paperback slip back into the bag. “We don’t have to.”

Their shared stillness is interrupted only by the spit of the fire and the pad of Dogmeat’s paws as he paces. To his astonishment, Leaf feels his hand pushed slightly deeper into the bag until his fingertips brush one of the thicker novels.

Charon lets him go.

“This one?” The book is bound in faded green, the author’s surname barely legible.

Charon says nothing.

“Okay,” Leaf says again. His hands lightly shake as he spreads the book across his lap, opening it and smoothing down the pages. The paper smells of mildew but the words are clearly visible. “Okay.”

 _“He- He fought because he actually felt safer fighting than running.”_ Charon’s voice sounds far away, muffled as though he is trying to speak through thick cloth. He is back to staring into the flames, into nothing.

Leaf pulls his knees up, fighting the urge to curl up in a ball and not quite knowing why.

“You… Charon, have you read this before?”

A crack.

“...before?”

Leaf swallows, pressing on despite himself.

“Before.”

“Don’t ask me that.”

Leaf flinches, tears welling up almost instantly. He still cries too easily. “I-I’m sorry?”

Charon raises his head, suddenly helpless. His eyes burn and search for something Leaf can only dream to guess at.

“No,” Charon says again, softer perhaps this time, though it is still so difficult to tell.

Leaf wipes his eyes with the back of a sleeve, hastily trying to quell the tears. He feels a little childish, and more shaken than he would like. The feeling seems to be mutual. Charon is a pillar next to him, cold and erect, but closer. 

Closer than before.

Again, Leaf swallows.

“Tell me to stop,” he says quietly. “If you’d prefer.”

As he reads, he waits for Charon’s growl to unroll into the night air, to stop his tongue. But, it never comes, and soon the words begin to grow, to fill the silence in the air, and between them.


	4. IV - Gage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You may have tangible wealth untold. Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be — I had a mother who read to me.” – Strickland Gillilan

Porter Gage’s personal affairs aren’t anybody’s fuckin’ business. Getting too up and pally with the guys he runs with is just asking for trouble. He didn’t get to where he is today (that is to say, alive and well until way past his fortieth birthday) by running his mouth. 

There’s one story, though, that’ll keep his trap shut until he’s pushing up daisies with the deathclaws.

If any raider along the east coast caught wind of the fact that once upon a time Porter Gage briefly sat on something like an atom bomb -

Well. 

He doesn’t expect to die in a bed at eighty-three, but there are less painful ways to top yourself. Like trying to play fetch with a yao guai.

New stories about The Lone Wanderer pop up in Boston and Nuka World every couple of months, as if to make sure that there's always a reason for good honest raider folk to keep looking over their shoulders all the time. There’s no real honor among thieves, but over the last ten years most of the gangs in the east have gotten pretty good at letting each other know where _He_ is going. And if _He_ is coming towards you, you do the smart thing and get the fuck out of the way.

Either that, or you die. 

That message even got through the thick skulls of the chemheaded imbeciles Gage runs with these days. God help ‘em if _He_ ever comes to Nuka World before Coulter gets his shit together.

2277 was a simpler time. 

What a shitshow of a year. 

Back then folks were still trying to kill _Him_ , and you couldn’t turn on the damn radio without catching wind of yet another crew squished like another shovel of brahmin shit.

Fucking Galaxy News Radio. Gage could swear that there wasn’t a raider alive in 2277 DC who wouldn’t have loved to cut that fucking DJ’s tongue out with a dull knife. The psychopath must have been getting off on poking the fire, stirring up tensions running higher than a crackhead, and making perfectly decent gangs turn on each other. 

For his part, Gage spent much of the year laying low, bouncing from gang to gang and seriously contemplating retirement. Fucking disgraceful, but there were no good decisions to be made in 2277. Gage, not being an idiot, had more savings to his name than your average raider scum, enough to pack up and make a run for greener pastures should things get too hot.

Of course, carrying that kind of cash around with you in camp was like pinning a mark on your ass, but Gage had secured himself a nice hidey-hole just outside Paradise Falls. The shack stuck up like a sore thumb, black and misshapen against the steely skies, plainly visible to any asshole looking for shelter. No good at all. But beneath was a bunker, just about large enough to keep a guy going for a week or two. It was much too crude to be pre-war, with ragged walls and no steel lining to insulate, but the entry was well-hidden beneath layers of rotten carpet. Gage would never have found it, if the poor fool who used to live there had not crawled out at just the wrong moment. Most wastelanders made a wide berth around the area, but occasionally one of the slaves who’d managed to make a run for it would try to make camp at Gage’s shack. Not that he was particularly worried about his stash, but he would drop by every few weeks to chase any squatters away, just in case. 

When Gage first heard of some fresh-faced vault geek laying waste to gang after gang as though it was nothing, he imagined a sort of self righteous Grognak the Barbarian type with mountain hands and murder in his eyes. What he got was a skinny little bitch, lying half dead on the floor of his shack, an enormous backpack pressed tightly to his chest as though he was trying to hide behind it. 

The kid was barely conscious when Gage found him, and truth be told Gage thought his intruder was a girl with that scrawny frame and all that matted blonde hair, tangled with blood and god knows. Maybe some poor waif crawled out of Jones’s demented love shack.

It was almost by chance that Gage chose to check the kid’s stuff, before dragging him outside to put a bullet in his brain. He gave the kid’s boot a swift kick to make sure he was out, prompting a weak but distinctly male groan. Gage unceremoniously upended the backpack, watching what must have been the kid's entire life scatter across the mouldy carpets. There was a good amount of food and ammunition, but nothing much of value, just old books and crumpled clothes. A lick of bright vault suit blue caught Gage’s eye, and he pulled it out of the mess to unfold it, taking in the boldly embroidered numbers with some bafflement. 

He looked at the kid then, lying there in his own filth with eyes all wide and weepy and barely able to focus, and Gage thought that surely this must be a joke. Some other little vault bastard who crawled out of the dirt to make his fortune in the famous Lone Wanderer’s footsteps. Another future corpse stood in the waiting room of the Wasteland.

Gage knelt by the kid’s side, roughly pulling him up by a fistful of hair to get a better look.

“The fuck kind of joke is this supposed to be? You’re _Him_? You?”

The boy’s skin tingled with fever sweat, cheeks all sunken enough to make him look like a walking carcass. Yellowed bandages covered his torso, crusted with pus in places where Gage guessed bullet holes were refusing to heal. But still, even well fed and whole, Gage could have wiped the floor with this kid. It just didn’t make a lick of sense. 

“Fucking pathetic, “ he spat, and pulled a hunting knife from his belt, ready to put this- this _impostor_ out of his misery. 

The soft touch of a palm, pressed weakly against Gage’s throat, stopped him dead.

The kid squeezed, trying to summon whatever strength he had left. Those bleary blues were suddenly alight with a furious sort of determination. 

Gage couldn’t help the laughter bubbling up in his chest.

“Damn, kid,” he said, easily freeing himself from his would-be strangler’s grip. The boy’s wrist felt bony and breakable in his fist. “You really are the real deal, huh? Been keeping a lot of folks on their toes of late.”

There was no reply, only a narrowing of the eyes and a rattling gasp for air. The knife lay abandoned at their feet.

Gage was unsure of what to do next. He was still not entirely convinced that someone so meek could have the kind of body count GNR said he did. A whole lot of bullshit Brotherhood propaganda, most likely. Nothing more, nothing less. 

Still, being gutted like a fish by a two bit raider in some nowhere shithole would have been a pitiful way for a goddamn legend to die. Even if it was mostly a lie. 

Not that Gage was ever capable of feeling pity.

"Look at you," he sneered, twisting the kid's hands behind his back, binding them with a length of rope from his own stash. Just in case. "You're dead meat anyway, no point dulling my knife on you." 

Among the mess of things that had spilled from the backpack was half a bottle of disinfectant and clean - well, mostly clean - cloths. No skin off Gage’s nose if some of it went to waste, he had not had it until a few hours ago, after all.

The bandages were caked firmly to the kid’s skin. Gage roughly cut the ligatures off piece by piece to avoid any more mess. The terrific quake in the boy’s body didn’t help, shaking himself nearly to pieces beneath Gage’s hands until he finally, thankfully, lost consciousness again. 

Gage was no medic, but he knew well enough how to knit a wound. Most raiders do, in theory, assuming they’re not off hootin’ on chems or alcohol. For the kid’s sake he hoped that somebody else had fished all the lead out of his guts, otherwise there really would be no saving him. 

After he finished his work Gage helped himself to half a pack of Fancy Lads Cakes from the kid’s supplies. Lone Wanderer or not, trying to preserve the boy’s life for the sake of some answers was a remarkably stupid thing to do. Gage chewed slowly, savoring dull sweetness and mildew, as he tiredly watched the slow motion of the kid’s chest.

Gage decided to salvage what he could from the clutter. A slim hardback with dog-eared pages caught his eye, and on closer inspection he was surprised to recognize the title. 

Trying to make sense of letters strained his eyes and always gave him a headache. Books had always been oral for him, anyway. Sure, his Mom used to fill in the gaps for him, on cold nights with only the hearth for heat and a brahmin farting outside the window. They never got as far as “Treasure Island” before he’d legged it to join his first gang and break the hereditary line of pushovers, to be not like his parents and their parents before them. But this book been one of her favorites, as far as his brain could go back, a story about treasure and adventure kept at the safe distance of _When you’re older._

Stupid, really.

On a whim, Gage opened the book, intending only to scan the first few lines. The old frustration returned immediately, but now he was more irritated, not with his dead Mom for her soppy smiles, but with himself, for being so desperately out of practice.

This book was not gonna make him its bitch.

He soldiered on, grumbling words and phrases to himself, trying to milk the images out of the little he knew. It was only the warming of the light that startled him back to himself. 

Across the room, in the light of the dawn, the boy was watching him.

Gage sneered and stuffed the book in his pocket.

“The hell are you looking at?”

* * *

Gage pulled up a chair and regarded the figure on the screen with some interest. 

Unremarkable. A lick of skin and bone in battered armor, fumbling to undo the many buckles keeping his helmet and gasmask in place. The pack on his back was almost as big as him. A shame, really. Gage almost allowed himself to hope when Harvey had radioed through about some bleeding heart waster who’d made it on the monorail. 

He jabbed the button on the intercom. 

“Well, look who learned the truth and still showed up.”

The mark jerked up in surprise, turning his head towards the camera as soon as he spotted it. Pale hands lifted to remove the helmet, and a mass of long hair spilled out onto his shoulders. 

“The fuck-” Gage said, not realizing that he was still broadcasting to the train car. 

The feed spat out a grainy black and white, but Gage would have known that face anywhere. Ten years on, and Leaf looked just like Gage remembered, like some pinup from a pre-war mag. Especially now that he was not bleeding out all over Gage’s business. How old was he now? Thirty? 

Fuck.

This was going to be some nasty business. 

Leaf smiled up at the camera.

“Why, hello Mr. Silver.”


	5. V - Longfellow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away" – Emily Dickinson

The sea of Far Harbor, despite its uninviting murk, remains a steady companion.

The foam licks at the rocks beneath Leaf’s bare feet, its presence tangible by the slow numbing of his toes. It does not bother him. Longfellow’s armored coat is warm around his shoulders, soft and heavy from long years of wear. It drowns him a little, but he likes the whiff of leather and briny sweat that clings to it.

Between Leaf's palms is a steaming mug of coffee, flavored ever more bitter with a hint of whiskey. He sips it slowly, watching the tide come in with the morning. 

It is strange to stand in the same spot every day and see such different things in the waves. Some nights Leaf dreams of kraken and whales, moving silently beneath the surface. Forever just out of view, but looming and waiting, ready to make a meal of unsuspecting fishermen. This morning he cannot see himself in the water, only mucky algae and the odd eyed fish swimming by just below the reflection.

He never used to dream much of anything, not since he crawled out of the vault and learned to sleep with one eye open. 

After four months in Far Harbor he is slowly starting to sleep through the night. Following more than a decade of restlessness, his body thanks him for the respite of a warm bed and hearty food. The early light still wakes him each morning with the muscle memory of wandering, but it is a small annoyance that he enjoys ignoring.

Familiarity is an alien concept, but there is a mundane sort of delight to being able to sneak out of bed, knowing on which boards to tread as to not make a sound. 

The people in town are starting to recognize him too, nodding their heads or even muttering a greeting as he walks along the pier.

Last week he spent too many caps on coarse knit sweaters that he brought from a salt crusted woman with fingers crooked and brown like the roots of a tree. As he handed over her money Leaf idly wondered if she was close to Longfellow’s age. 

Of course, the old hunter’s hands are nothing like that. 

Goosebumps creep up Leaf’s naked leg with the rising breeze, and he pulls the coat tight. 

Later he will go check on the lobster cages, another old routine in which to learn the ways of the harbormen. Leaf’s hands are well suited to the mending of netting, to finding the place where you may pierce the shell of a clam, and for someone so used to scarcity the abundance the sea provides is yet another source of wonder. 

An irritable clanging of pots and pans emerges from the shack, and Leaf swallows his smile with the last of his coffee. 

He gingerly pads through the mulch and wet leaves, carefully washing his feet in water from a bucket he left by the door just for this purpose. It is warm inside, the fire in the stove rekindled by Longfellow, who is frying eggs and herring for their breakfast. 

“Morning Shrimp,” Longfellow greets, not bothering to divert his attention from the spitting pan. The apron he wears looks to be about as old as Leaf, a long oval of patchy leather so rough it might have been cut straight from a brahmin’s back. 

“Good morning.”

Leaf dresses quick and quiet, and then sets the table with mismatched plates and cutlery without waiting to be asked. He gives the coffee pot an experimental little shake. Still just about enough for one more.

“I’m good,” says Longfellow. He is not often one to dilute his drink with mere mundane caffeine. “You have it.”

“Thank you.”

With breakfast ready, their plates are piled high. Leaf forces himself to eat slowly, to remember some of his better vault-boy manners. He does not quite know why but keeping his elbows off the table and using both knife and fork makes him feel more secure invading somebody else’s home, even if Longfellow does not have similar qualms. His gracious host messily mops at his plate with a crust of bread, wolfing down beans and yolks.

Life is still hard and dangerous in Far Harbor, but there is little scarcity. The hardy, self-sufficient sons and daughters of the surf relay on the providence of the sea. Out in the wasteland Leaf taught himself to hunt well enough to survive but being able to eat his fill without fear remains a thoroughly novel experience. 

Amused, he wonders whether he will put on weight if he stays long enough.

If he stays -

Minus he helps with housework and hunting, Longfellow asks nothing of him. That was the deal, at least in the beginning, when Leaf had only meant to remain on the island a week or two more.

Loathe to be abandoned amidst a group of strangers, well-meaning or not, the android girl he’d escorted all the way to Arcadia from downtown DC had begged Leaf to stay with tears in her eyes. He has never been good at saying no, but on this occasion the prospect of being able to wander through the forest like a sprite from one of his favorite books held its own kind of appeal. Few of the places he has traveled were ever this green.

Of course, between Longfellow and him, things have gotten a little complicated.

But there is work to be done and whiskey to be had, and if at the end of a long day there’s a warm bed with some good company in it, well, that’s all the more reason not to think too hard about the details of their arrangement. 

Sometimes Longfellow makes this part difficult. 

“Got a letter while you were out,” he says, not quite casually. He is watching Leaf scrub the burned grit out of the pan after breakfast, nursing his first tumbler of paint stripper booze for the day. “Adam’s dropping by at the end of the month. Should only be for a couple of days.”

Leaf’s arms are buried in lukewarm dishwater almost up to his elbows. 

He knows that Longfellow has something like an adopted son who he writes to and loves dearly. Adam, close enough to Leaf’s age, heads a growing militia down in Boston. He came to Far Harbor some years ago to help with a spot of trouble between Arcadia and the harbormen. Longfellow has retold the story of how he and Adam hunted the beast called Shipbreaker on more nights at the Plank than Leaf has bothered to count. Shipbreaker’s claw is still mounted proudly on the wall right behind him, the centerpiece in a graveyard of mementos of hunts past. 

Drying his hands on a rag, Leaf fights the impulse to ask if this means that he ought to collect his things and disappear. One of the things he likes most about Longfellow is that he is refreshingly tactless, leaving little room for guesswork. In that, they are both alike and it nurtures an ease between them that reminds him a little of the early days in DC when he was scouring the ruins with Dogmeat at his side and Charon at his back. Thinking of them still stings, but it is a pain dulled by time, and now it mostly just feels like fondness. 

“Alright,” he says finally, meaning it. 

Longfellow smirks into his glass and somehow the matter is concluded, as simply as that. 

They pass the next few hours in silence, tending to their chores as they would on any other day. Longfellow spends his time in the tannery, scraping residual flesh out of a bear’s hide with a blade. It is still cold out, but he has stripped down to his wifebeater and an apron that looks disconcertingly like the one he uses in the kitchen. There is a thin layer of sweat on his brow and arms as he repeats the same motion over and over.

The smell in the little tannery is vile, thick with death and lime and something Leaf can only think of as vaguely beastly. He sits outside instead, breathing in the bitter air as he tends to cage and netting. Nearby the fog converter emits its persistent heavy humming. Soon it will be time to empty the filter-

“Hey, Shrimp.” 

Longfellow emerges, all cleaned up and dressed in his coat and heavy walking boots. Tired though he looks, behind his beard is a barely hidden grin. 

Leaf puts down his needle and thread.

“What’s got you so excited?”

“You’ll see soon enough.” Grasping the muzzle of his rifle, Longfellow leans on it heavily, as though it were a walking stick. Not that he needs one. “Got you spooked this morning, did I?”

Leaf’s ears and chest feel suddenly warm. 

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” he lies plainly, lowering his head towards his work to hide a smile. “You going somewhere, old man?”

“Aye, lad,” Longfellow nods. “You, too. Go fetch your gun.”

Rising, Leaf wipes his hands clean on his thighs, thinking that a little grime won’t make a difference to the state of his jeans, fraying at the ankles where he has shortened them with a knife. 

“Where are we going?”

“I told you: You’ll see.”

-

The fog is no less hungry than the gulpers watching them ravenously from the marshland. It permeates everything, from clothes to lungs and never really seems to wash out from either. It clutches to trees, eating at the bark to leave patterns, and Leaf wonders not for the first time if it is stitched into the fabric of the harbormen’s skin. 

They walk deeper into the heart of the island for what feels like forever. Trees and shrubbery now grow thickly around them. The sky darkens until it is difficult to know the time, not helped by the smog of the weather.

Gazing out at the trees, Longfellow quotes a line from a poem by a long dead namesake. 

“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks. Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight.”

Perhaps he does not expect Leaf to recognize the verse, but this is another thing where their tastes are surprisingly aligned. At home Longfellow has a small stack of salvaged prose and poetry, all gathered in collections beneath his bed, right next to a pile of tattered magazines full of women’s skin that, for Leaf, hold no fascination.

“They shut the road through the woods seventy years ago,” Leaf quotes in return, struggling to clamber over fallen logs, nearly toppling with the gear strapped to his back. “Weather and rain have undone it again, and now you would never know there was once a road through the woods.”

Longfellow’s answering laugh is so loud as to disturb a small flock of black birds that had been going about their own business in the bushes along the path.

“Allons!” he bellows, closing his large hand around Leaf’s forearm to pull him up. “The road is before us! It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be not detain’d!”

Leaf wants to kiss him then, with all the urgency of overwhelming fondness. There is just about enough time to squeeze his wrist firmly before Longfellow evades him.

“Come along now, Shrimp- we’re nearly there!” the old hunter calls. Striding ahead with sudden vigor, his breath labours against the incline.

Even in such a remote place the dreary old world is sinking its talons where it is not welcome. The wreckage of a plane has spilled its guts across the forest floor, peppering the area with rusty pieces of debris. The bulk of it rests atop a small hill, evidently providing shelter to somebody Longfellow is quite familiar with. As they get closer Leaf can detect the faint invitation of roasting meat upon the breeze. 

“Erickson!” Longfellow huffs, stopping just outside. One of his hands comes to rest on Leaf’s shoulder. Initially Leaf thinks Longfellow is attempting to steady himself after his little jog up the hill, but he soon reassesses the situation when a super mutant emerges from behind a tarp, regarding them guardedly from beneath an enormous Yao-Guai headdress. 

If Leaf tenses, it is only for a moment; the world is full of terrors, but if he went around shooting at everything that so much as looks threatening he would not have made any friends at all out here.

Awkwardly prim, Leaf's head jerks in a nod. Longfellow gives his shoulder a warm squeeze, whispering a half-joking, _“Don’t overdo it, lad.”_ They follow Erickson into what remains of the aircraft, even as Leaf can feel his ears turning pink. 

The inside of the wreck is curiously homely, filled with sofas and furs. Something like a lifetime ago Fawkes mentioned that super mutants do not feel the cold so much as humans do, so the giant hole in the plane’s side hardly seems to matter.

If Longfellow’s evident esteem for Erickson’s was not enough endorsement, Leaf immediately decides that he likes him based purely on the evident health of the hounds. Large crates containing dogs of all shapes and sizes fill most of the plane not occupied with Erickson’s belongings. Most of them are ordinary working mutts, but some of them are large enough to suggest they might have a bit of wolf in them.

A mutant hound, huge and sea green like Erickson himself, sleeps peacefully with its head in its paws. Leaf, who decided long ago that the company of animals was much preferable to that of his fellow human beings, itches to say hello. Not wanting to be rude, he sits instead, watching Erickson balance an almost comically small looking kettle on the stove.

Longfellow smirks. Having had to stop and wait whenever Leaf encountered some poor, unsuspecting harborman’s guard dog in need of affection throughout the past four months means he knows exactly what is going through Leaf’s mind. 

“Go on,” he mutters, gesturing. “Erickson won’t mind. Let the old men catch up, I’ll call when I need you.”

The crates are padded with clean blankets that look like the ones Leaf has seen piled high on stalls along the seafront on market day, and he wonders if Erickson is ever welcome in Far Harbor, or if Longfellow keeps him well supplied. Some of the crates are open, and their inhabitants come to cautiously greet him with hopeful whines. Leaf sinks down to one knee, and immediately finds himself nudged around by questing muzzles, snuffling his hands and pockets.

“I’m sorry!” he laughs. “I didn’t think to bring any jerky!” 

His hands are full of fur and patchy skin and he must be smiling from ear to ear when he finally rejoins the conversation. Now, most of the hounds continue to roam within fussing distance, eager for pets in place of sleep.

Leaf accepts a cup of steaming tea from Erickson, who it seems is relatedly awkward. If you do not speak to another soul for a long time, its easy to forget how. It is good to have Longfellow, who is brave to talk for all of them, sharing recent tales of life in Far Harbor and the news of Adam’s impending arrival.

“You have to tell him that I’ve got some good stock this year, if he is still looking for guard dogs,” Erickson says, sounding rather satisfied at the prospect.

“The hell I’ll tell him,” barks Longfellow, nearly spilling some of the contents of his flask as he makes his drink a little more Irish. “You tell him yourself. As though Adam would not come to say hello to you and everyone else he knows! Don’t suspect I’ll be seeing much of him the day he’ll arrive. He’ll be traipsing from the Plank all the way up here and to Arcadia to spend the night, I reckon.”

Erickson nods gravely. “How long will he stay this time?”

“Who knows?” says Longfellow, offering the open flask first to Leaf then to Erickson, both of whom quietly decline. “He’ll be bringing some mainlander friends with him this time. Let us see how long they last with the chill and the fog in their lungs!” At this he laughs so hard as to make himself cough, leaving Leaf to rescue his drink.

“A week or so,” Longfellow wheezes, chasing Leaf’s darting head with an affectionate paw of his hand.

“Mh. Be good to see him again.”

They speak more of Adam, sharing tales of the good things he has done for the island. Although Leaf now knows that he will not be banished for the sake of Adam’s comfort, the subject makes him feel uncomfortable. It feels selfish, somehow. He hides it as well as he can, grateful that Longfellow is used to his pondering quiet. 

They stay for another few hours, until sunset starts to lick orange at the horizon. Longfellow rises laboriously, making his joints pop as he stretches. 

“Right, we’d better be off. Make it back to the Last Plank in time to buy some stew, what say ye, lad?”

The Plank means more drink, but the prospect of not having to labor for a warm meal is not uninviting. “Sounds good to me.”

Erickson nods, collecting the mugs and teapot dexterously in one huge hand. He drops them carelessly into the sink and fetches a length of rope hanging from a hook by the door. 

“Very well,” he says. The plane shakes with the weight of his steps as he moves to the crate where the mutant hound still sleeps. He ties the rope around her neck, gently rubbing her flank to wake her. “Up with you, you log,” he grumbles. 

“A mutant hound?” Longfellow sounds skeptical.

“Sturdiest beasts there are,” Erickson replies, a little defensively. “This one’s soft as butter. No use as a guard dog. Don’t see the harbormen buying her from me.” The dog waddles after him obediently. For all her bulbous muscle mass and protruding fangs, her demeanor is more that of an old family dog than that of a vicious beast. Yawning hugely, she shows a maw deep enough to accommodate Leaf’s head in its entirety. 

“Don’t think your boy will mind,” says Erickson, offering the makeshift lead to Leaf expectantly.

“Huh?”

“She’s yours to keep, lad, “ Longfellow explains. A memory of an evening spent retelling the loss of Charon and Dogmeat, his first and only real companions, suddenly rises clearly to the front of Leaf’s mind. “To roam with as ye’ please.”

It should be impossible to feel such contradictory things all at once, but Leaf’s heart aches with happiness and something that does not feel unlike grief. Although the wandering was often lonely, he has not allowed himself the comfort of another dog in nearly ten years. At his feet, the mutant hound shuffles curiously from one paw to the other, alternating between snuffling his legs and looking up expectantly. 

“Her name is Lady,” Erickson offers gruffly.

Lady’s huge head is solid and leathery beneath Leaf’s stroking fingers, and he can feel tears swelling in his eyes, like they used to so readily when he was much younger and lost out in the world. 

“Ah, Shrimp-” Longfellow pulls him into his arms, unconcerned about Erickson’s presence. “You’re alright, lad, you’re alright.”

The smell of him engulfs Leaf, who readily soaks up the warmth and comfort he did not know he wanted, his tears mixing with the fog and sea spray stained deep in the fabric of Longfellow’s coat.

“Might not want to do much roaming for a while,” he mumbles. His voice is muffled, but the tightening of Longfellow’s arms makes it clear that the old hunter has heard him. 

“As you please, lad. As you please.”

Poor Erickson shuffles to tend to the rest of his kennels to give them a moment’s space and spare himself the discomfort. Lady whines softly in sympathy, flopping down right on the floor like a mossy old log. 

After a moment Longfellow chuckles and leans down to whisper to Leaf. “Here he lies where he longed to be, home is the sailor, home from sea. And the hunter home from the hill.”

“You are ridiculous,” Leaf laughs through his tears, beating his fist against Longfellow’s chest just once in protest. “That’s a requiem, not a love poem.” 

He tenses as soon as the word escapes him, but Longfellow has the grace to pretend he has not noticed the implication, only grumbling, “Don’t you argue genre with me, lad,” as he presses a kiss to the top of Leaf’s head. 

-

Adam arrives on a day like chilled pea soup, with a cold snap that would feel hazardous even without the poison in the air. 

It is impossible not to shiver at the distinct sound of vertibird blades cutting through the air like the humming of mutant wasps, but Longfellow’s arm around his shoulders is enough to keep the flashes of tall Enclave soldiers at bay. Uncharacteristically, Longfellow has been up since dawn, pacing about the shack like an excitable child on Christmas morning, agitating Leaf and Lady alike whilst making a half-hearted attempt at tidying by kicking empty bottles beneath the furniture. A pointless effort, really, not least because Adam and his companions will be staying at The Last Plank where there is more space and running water. 

Judging by the way Lady presses her quivering mountain of a body against her masters’ legs until the vertibird has landed, its clear she does not like it much either. 

“Some guard dog you are,” mutters Longfellow, rubbing her ears. “Come along, let’s say hello.”

The bird’s panels open before they manage to reach it, and out jumps a smiling young man with startlingly bright hair.

“Longfellow!” he calls, barely meet them halfway before sweeping Longfellow into a bear hug. 

“Been too long, Capt’n,” says Longfellow, patting Adam’s back.

Leaf barely has the chance to embrace the awkwardness of intruding on their reunion before Adam has turned to him and is firmly shaking his hand.

“You must be Leaf,” Adam says. “It’s good to finally meet you.” He has the kind of face that is difficult to dislike, and a confident grip that remains studiously shy of crushing. Leaf can almost imagine someone like him on a recruitment poster from before the war. _Uncle Sam needs you, you poor fool_.

“I-” Leaf blinks, unused to being the focus of so much attention. “You, too.”

Adam is still smiling, and somehow it is not annoying.

“I’ll better go help fetch our things, or Deacon will complain,” he says, carefully extending a hand to let Lady sniff him before giving her head a rub. “He’s already not too happy with me for making him fly all the way out here, but I’m sure he’ll come around once we get some food into him. Man, I’ve missed the sea air…”

They make their way to the vertibird together. A bald man with dark glasses is sitting cross-legged on the muddy ground beneath the plane, smoking a cigarette and looking decidedly green around the gills. He does not even flinch as a heavy bag hits the ground beside him, with another one following quickly after, a series of projectiles from inside the plane.

“Hey,” he says, waving halfheartedly.

“Don’t mind Deacon,” a chiding growl emits from a tall, broad ghoul departing the vertibird. “He’s usually this dramatic.”

He jumps to the ground, straightens up and chokes on whatever he was going to say next.

Leaf is frozen. As is Charon, as their gazes meet in the gulf between them and Deacon twists his head up in confusion.

“Fuck-,” Charon starts.

“Charon-“ gasps Leaf. He lifts his arms up, toward the empty air. Shock isn't strong enough to stop the tears. "Charon...!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In order, these are the poems Longfellow and Leaf quote to each other:
> 
> Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
> 
> The Way Through the Woods - Rudyard Kipling
> 
> Song of the Open Road, 15 - Walt Whitman
> 
> Requiem - Robert Louis Stevenson


	6. VI - Reno

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”  
> ― Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Like will-o'-wisps in an old English folk story, the lights of Far Harbor gleam through the gloom and beckon sailors in with the fading light. It is only about four o’clock in the afternoon, but bleakness is to be expected of the Massachusetts winter.

Longfellow and his remaining guests have retreated to the shack. Leaf finds himself infinitely grateful for the steady rush of breaking waves against the rocks, for he feels the silence between him and Charon would deafen him otherwise. Beside him, Lady’s presence is a comfort, though he does not dare to pet her flank, lest he wake the dozing mutant hound. 

“You’ve not changed.” Charon eventually takes pity. “All this crying.”

“That’s not fair.” Leaf’s answering laugh flakes from his throat as he cards a hand through his hair. “People don’t come back to life every day.”

Charon’s scarred vocal cords attempt a sandpaper chuckle. Leaf’s ears ring with it, and he dimly thinks that it is a good thing he is sitting down, because the novelty of hearing Charon laugh is making him feel vaguely dizzy. He wraps his arms around his knees, as if cold.

“I can’t say the same for you,” Leaf admits. “You’ve changed plenty.”

The last half hour has been a hurricane of questions and thoughts and assumptions, with much of what was said and done difficult to recall through the mess of it all. During Leaf’s initial breakdown Charon had pulled him into his arms, an action so impulsively human that it briefly made Leaf doubt the ghoul before him could be Charon after all. But here he is, all scarred seven foot of him, unmistakably himself except for the fact that he talks and moves like a stranger. Even watching him freely uncap a bottle seems alien.

“Suppose I have.” Sitting down on the rocks next to Leaf, Charon slowly sips his beer. “It’s kind of a long story, kid.”

“Charon, I’m thirty-two.”

“And I’m two hundred and something years old, damn right you’re a kid to me.” Charon’s mouth pulls teasingly. “Besides, the old man calls you _Shrimp_ , and you sure as hell aren’t shellfish.”

Leaf can feel the blood rising in his cheek. His first impulse is to mutter something like _‘He’s not that old’_ but that would be both a lie and utterly inane. So, he complains instead.

“See, you’re arguing with me! Whatever happened to _I am happy if you are happy_?” 

Good-natured humor was never a part of their shared vocabulary when they were an awkward teenager and a traumatized gun for hire, and at the slow turn of Charon’s head Leaf feels a cold, creeping dread. Has he spoken too callously? He always watched his words so carefully around Charon, and even now, he avoids accidental suggestions. The fear dissipates the moment he sees the almost triumphant gleam in Charon's eyes.

"Went up in smoke."

Leaf’s gasp comes out in a whistled squeak.

"Your contract?"

Charon nods.

"But you said - you said it wasn't possible." He distinctly remembers this subject as one of their first actual conversations. Sitting around an improvised campfire near the Washington Monument, Leaf had interrogated a customarily monosyllabic Charon about possible ways to end the contract, suggesting anything from drafting up a second version to just setting the damn thing on fire. His effort had ended abruptly when he noticed, to his horror, that they were not only getting nowhere, but that Charon had tired of their talk long ago and was unable to speak up. 

“After more than two centuries of being a fucking puppet it seemed a good assumption to me,” Charon shrugs his shoulders. “Not that anyone really wanted to try before you.” He fixes Leaf with a curious look, one that makes Leaf feel oddly warm despite the November wind. “Still, the lick of paper you had wasn’t the first copy of the contract. Getting rid of the paper wouldn’t have done anything at the time. It was a symbol of the conditioning, no more.”

Lady softly grunts, kicking her tree trunk legs in her sleep. Leaf soothingly runs his nails along her leathery stomach. 

“But how did you do it then?”

“I told you, it’s a long story. Met a good doctor and some…” Charon masks his hesitation with another swallow of beer. The word he finds seems to amuse him, for he is grinning devilishly when he continues. “…some ghosts from my past.” His gentling gaze shifts downwards to where Leaf’s hand still rests on Lady’s belly. “You and your monsters.” 

“That’s not- I don’t think of you-” Something in Leaf’s chest contracts painfully at the remark, but Charon cuts him off with a laugh.

“I know you don’t,” he says. “Fuck, kid, I’ve seen how you talk to people. I figure you didn’t feel particularly human yourself some of the time.” His blue eyes gleam with a mirth that does, and does not, look out of place amidst his marred features. Not for the first time Leaf wonders what Charon might have looked like before the radiation licked his skin from his flesh.

“You’re not wrong,” Leaf admits, averting his eyes as past guilt creeps into his gut. The first friendly face he ever saw in this desperate world of survival and grit belonged to a terrified ghoul working himself to the bone at Moriarty’s saloon. Gob had been suffering and abused but he was still good to Leaf, giving him food and water and a bed under the counter when Moriarty was taking the night off. As someone who felt thoroughly beaten by the wasteland, Leaf supposes it made sense for him to develop an affinity for the downtrodden. Not that anyone ever looked at him with half as much disdain as at the average ghoul. 

He finds himself eager to change the topic.

“What do you mean, ghosts from your past?” 

Charon seems to struggle to pick the right words.

“I met some people, kid. People who should not be alive. People who knew me before everything went to shit.” He guffaws at the widening of Leaf’s eyes. “I know, I know. Impossible right? But speaking of impossibilities. Kid, how the hell did you survive our little encounter with the Enclave? I managed to track you all the way to Raven Rock, but the place had been blown sky high by the time I got there. Your work?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that, but yeah. I guess,” Leaf concedes. The thing he remembers best about meeting President Eden is feeling exceedingly small in a very large room. _You and your monsters_. When Charon had said it, Leaf had not thought of Fawkes or Charon, but instead conjured an image of Porter Gage, the raider who had nursed him back to health after he crawled out of Raven Rock, battered to hell with a growing certainty that Charon was lost forever. 

“Most of it was just me crawling through vents and…” Leaf frowns as he continues, trying to recall the characteristics of the Enclave base. “Well. They had this, this grating under much of the facility floors. There was a lot of running and taking potshots at soldiers from the shadows. At least until I made it to Eden.” He cannot recall if word ever got out that President Eden was nothing but a rogue AI, a remnant from before the war, but it feels like a lot to explain sitting on a rock by the shore. He is starting to understand what Charon meant by saying ‘it’s a long story’.

Charon seems satisfied enough by the heavily abridged account of Leaf’s escape.

“You were always good at that, little sniper,” he praises, just a little teasingly. “How’d it go again? Ah, yes! _All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you._ ”

Leaf recognizes the quote immediately.

“That’s from Watership Down!” he exclaims. “We read that together.”

Charon scoots closer. He radiates enough heat that Leaf wonders if ghouls, like mutants, do not feel the cold as bitterly as humans do.

“I know,” Charon tells him conspiratorially. “And to answer a question you asked me a long, long time ago: Yes, I’d read it before. Had it by my bunk when I was in the army. Before they started sticking me with needles and fucking with my head. Sorry I couldn’t tell you at the time.”

Leaf can hear the blood rushing in his ears, but Charon just rubs Leaf's back with a grin and takes another swig of his beer. Leaf knows better than to lose himself in the sudden surge of anger at who or what the bastards were who turned Charon into little more than a tool. But now is not the time for that conversation. Maybe later when they get to know each other better. That thought hurts.

“Read it a couple more times, since,” the ghoul continues, downing his beer. “You left it in my bag. Got obsessed with it for a while after I lost you. That and the damn radio. Tuned in to Galaxy News every chance I got, trying to find you again.”

Tears well in Leaf’s eyes, matching the tide running swells between his boots. What must Charon have thought when Leaf took Fawkes westwards a few years ago? Leaf has carried his PipBoy far enough to know which signals hold and which do not. You don't need to get far out of DC for the station to die to nothing but static and garble.

“I- I had no idea,” he chokes out, daring to place his hand on Charon’s wrist, feeling out the rough tissue. They never touched much either, back in the day. “After Project Purity, after _everything._ Jesus, I spent years hunting Enclave stragglers. I…”

Behind Leaf’s head, there is a quiet rustling.

Charon’s face twists into something ugly. He shoves Leaf aside and pitches his empty bottle at the bush behind. 

The shattering is followed by a startled yelp. Lady wakes with a start, jerking her meaty head around in confusion. As Longfellow proudly said: some guard dog. 

“Bit of privacy, Deacon, would ya?” Charon calls, sounding more like himself than he has all day. “ _Move_.”

The man called Deacon lifts a beseeching hand, giving off the air of somebody trying and failing not to look as though he has been impersonating a tree. His expression is difficult to make out behind the sunglasses, especially in the foggy dark, but Leaf does not think he has the decency to look ashamed of himself. 

“Don’t remember you as the bloodthirsty kind, kid,” Charon mutters, eyes trained on Deacon’s retreating back. Presumably, the man is going to rejoin Longfellow and Adam inside the cabin.

“I thought they’d killed you.” Leaf feels the heat creeping into his cheeks and ears again, more so now that he must wonder how much of what was said has been overheard. 

“And your dad.”

It occurs to Leaf that he has not thought of Father in a long, long time.

“I cared more about the dog.”

“You don’t mean that, kid.”

Leaf shakes his head defiantly, even as his stomach roils.

“I do a little,” he argues, blinking away tears. He passes a hand over his face, and tenses momentarily, for Charon puts an arm around his shoulders. The light has truly faded now, and bells are ringing for the return of the last fishing boats for the evening. 

For a moment, they stand and watch the boats flock to the shore, the bells ceasing their chimes and the subdued laughter of reunited families echoing beneath the fog.

“It’s getting cold,” Charon murmurs. “You wanna join the others? Your old man will be wondering.”

Leaf wants to run into the night and never come back. It’s a foolish impulse, more a Vault Boy then the Lone Wanderer. He knows that he is happier in Far Harbor than he has ever been, and happier than he is ever likely to be anywhere else. So instead, he just says, “Not yet.”

“I am happy if-”

“Charon, please don’t.”

Charon huffs a laugh. “About that, actually. Never told you my name, did I?”

* * *

“Lucky I took some lessons,” Adam says cheerily from his vantage point in the pilot’s chair. “Never got my license, but I doubt anyone’s gonna check my paperwork.” He shoots Leaf a goofy grin, a little too eager to milk his joke. “I’ll assume you won’t tell on me?”

“Won’t tell a soul,” Leaf murmurs absently, watching Adam push buttons and flick switches to make sure everything will be safe for their departure. He still cannot see himself ever choosing to purposefully mount a device so old and so ill-maintained, but Adam’s ready explanations take some terror out of the vertibird. Even with his broad shoulders and strong hands, it is difficult to picture Adam among the soldiers fighting in Anchorage two hundred years ago. It is less the oddity of meeting somebody from before the great war who is neither a ghoul nor mutant, and more the fact that Adam is…

Well.

Sweet is not the word, but it is close enough. Adam laughs easily at Longfellow’s dirtier jokes, but always touched with embarrassment, and generally gives off an air of somebody who would much rather provide for people than shoot at them. Then again, from what Leaf understands of Adam’s Minutemen, they seem to be a happy medium between the two.

The week has passed too quickly. Leaf would have loved to get to know Adam better. Or this new Charon, for that matter, who he can imagine fighting at Anchorage much more easily. 

As complete and startling as Charon’s transformation seemed at first, things are not quite as straightforward. According to both Charon and Adam, most days are good, but they are interspersed with complications. Charon will seem perfectly fine until somebody says the wrong thing, or he lets his mind wander to dark places, and suddenly he will freeze and the world disappears around him. During their brief reunion Leaf has not witnessed this, though Charon has snapped at Deacon with such ferocity that he seemed moments away from unloading his shotgun on more than one occasion. 

Privately, Leaf guiltily wishes he had. He cannot see what Adam could possibly like about the man, let alone Charon, who alleges that he, too, believes that Deacon has his moments. The only credible theory Leaf can come up with is that Charon appreciates Deacon for his connection to the Railroad. One of their other agents came across Charon’s contract, after all, though Leaf would not have suspected even this new Charon of being quite so sentimental by proxy. 

All week Deacon has been nothing but sulky. He complained about everything from the weather and the remoteness of the island, to being bored at Far Harbor because he did not want to accompany the rest of the party to track through the forest for a visit to Erickson’s. Even now, less than fifteen minutes before their scheduled departure the man makes sure that everybody knows how displeased he is about the prospect of flying, incessantly click-click-clicking his lighter from the back of the plane.

Adam catches one of Leaf’s increasingly irritated backward glances.

“You should probably go and say goodbye to Reno,” he says, rescuing Leaf with a rueful little smile. “I’ll be along in a moment. Maybe with sourpuss, if I can convince him to put on his big-boy pants for a moment.”

“Thank you,” says Leaf, extracting himself from the plane before he can hear Deacon’s pseudo-witty reply. 

He finds Charon standing by the tail of the plane, sly smile firmly in place as he patiently listens to Longfellow spinning one of his yarns. 

“Shipbreaker?” Leaf asks as he approaches. 

“The nerve on you, lad!” Longfellow laughs, turning his head to give Leaf a mock reproachful look. “Actually I was just tellin’ our mutual friend ‘bout the first time ye took on a hermit crab.” He leans into Charon again, and whispers very loudly indeed that he will never forget the look on Leaf’s face when half a bus full of very angry crustacean emerged from the mud. 

“I’ll believe it.” Charon, too, shows teeth. “You should have seen us hunting Deathclaws back in the day. Rarely got close enough to be a real worry, but you wouldn’t think they could fit that much adrenaline into somebody so small. Lucky your hands don’t shake, kid.” The grin morphs into a smile. “Not quite the same, but it felt good to go out hunting with you these last few days. Just like old times, eh?”

"Reno…" Leaf starts, despairing a little at the realization that it must stand in for so many other things. Things like _I miss traveling with you,_ and _I feel guilty for still thinking of you as Charon_ and _I loved you better than anyone else_. Some of his dejection must bleed through in his voice, for he suddenly finds himself swept up in an embrace so tight he can almost feel his ribs creak in protest. A scarred hand strokes through his hair, and he is painfully aware of both Charon’s warmth, and of Longfellow now saying his own goodbyes to Adam and Deacon a bare few feet away. 

“Don’t be like that, kid, I’ll be seeing you soon enough,” Charon says, uncharacteristically gently. “Got a book to return to you, don’t I?”

“I’ll hold you to that.” Leaf’s own voice is muffled against Charon’s stomach, and for a moment he hesitates, but then he pulls away enough to look up, some of that old determination creeping back in, the kind that made raiders and Enclave soldiers cower in fear. “And next time I’ll lend you another.”

Charon laughs, as freely as he does these days.

“Guess we have a deal.” He ruffles Leaf’s hair as a means of goodbye.

The vertibird’s ancient engine wheezes in protest when Adam starts the motor, but soon the blades are spinning with their customary roar. Once more Longfellow is beside him, though this time he does not hesitate to put his arms around Leaf’s waist as they watch the plane ascending with the ensuing wind whipping at their coats.

Soon they will go back to the shack, where a cup of whiskey, and a tame mutant hound will be waiting patiently by the fire. Well. Perhaps not so much the mutant hound. 

Longfellow will darn some socks and complain about aches in his back, the liar. They will make and eat their dinner together, and afterwards Leaf will light an oil lamp and start reading _The Count of Monte Christo_ for the dozenth time. Just to make sure he can predict if Char- if Reno will like it when he comes to pick it up.

Then again, who has ever needed an excuse to return to a favorite story?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Charon's "kind of a long story" will be coming to an AO3 collection near you at some point. Probably. 
> 
> The author adores Deacon, by the way. Leaf does not. 
> 
> As usual, thanks to BannedBloodOranges for making this thing readable, and for letting me borrow Adam (and, frankly, Charon's backstory).


End file.
